Den ökade populariteten av onlinespel har skapat nya sätt att interagera med varandra i en virtuell värld. Spelare kan idag möta andra spelare och tävla mot varandra bland dagens populära onlinespel. Onlinespel tillför inte bara nöje utan kan också ha negativa konsekvenser på spelaren. Trolling är ett framväxande problem i gamingvärlden och kan förknippas med nätmobbning. Spelare som trollar kan tillämpa olika trollingtaktiker, de kan utnyttja kommunikationskanaler för att trakassera andra spelare eller använda spelmekaniker för att sabotera spelupplevelsen. Syftet med studien är att skapa en förståelse för fenomenet trolling i onlinespel genom att undersöka hur spelare tillämpar olika trollingtaktiker. För att besvara studiens frågeställning och nå ökad förståelse för hur spelare trollar har en kvalitativ studie genomförts med onlinespelare som spelar frekvent. Respondenternas svar på vilka trollingtaktiker de använde varierade men det gick att konstatera att beteendet var ett vanligt förekommande. I slutsatsen presenteras hur våra respondenter tillämpar olika trollingtaktiker i onlinespel. / The increased popularity of online games has created new ways to interact with each other in a virtual world. Players can now meet other players and compete against each other among today's popular online games. Online gaming does not only bring the user pleasure but can also have negative consequences on the player. Trolling is an emerging problem in the gaming world and can be associated with cyber-bullying. Players can use different trolling tactics, they can use communication channels to harass players or use game mechanics to sabotage the gaming experience. The purpose of this study is to create a better understanding of trolling by examining which trolling tactics players use in online games. To get a better understanding of how players troll, we performed a qualitative study with online players who play frequently. Respondents' responses to the trolling tactics they used varied, but it was found that the behavior was a common occurrence. The conclusion presents how our respondents apply different trolling tactics in online games.

This thesis places art heists in the context of their journalistic and online commentaries to examine their implications for subversive anti-capitalist criticism. The 2012 Rotterdam Art Heist functions as a case study that demonstrates how online trolling participates in the production of a culture that undermines the conventional dualisms between popular and high culture. By linking crime and its commentaries to game and performance theories the thesis promotes pop culture against its devaluation by 20th century cultural critics Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. Hence, it argues for folklore’s role in critically rethinking the scholarship on the work of these acclaimed cultural critics. Anti-establishment perspectives are set against bourgeois moments in the Frankfurt School’s critical theory.

Within recent years, there has been a significant increase in popular commentary on internet trolls and what they mean for online interactions. Significant attention is often paid to framing trolls as individual, pathological, and atypical. While there is much one-sided dialogue occurring in the media, however, the literature on internet trolling remains scarce. This exploratory study contributes to the developing literature by addressing internet trolls directly. Drawing on interviews with a self-identified troll and content analysis, this thesis aims to understand how trolls operate, interact, and make meaning while highlighting the role of identity and emotions. This study finds that internet trolls are highly organized and social, in direct contradiction to the prevailing media narrative.

Ethnographic in approach, this dissertation examines trolling, an online subculture devoted to meme creation and social disruption. Rather than framing trolling behaviors as fundamentally aberrant, I argue that trolls are agents of cultural digestion; they scour the landscape, repurpose the most exploitable material, then shove the resulting monstrosities into the faces of an unsuspecting populace. Within the political and social context of the United States, the region to which I have restricted my focus, I argue that trolls on 4chan/b/ and Facebook perform a grotesque pantomime of a number of pervasive cultural logics, including masculine domination and white privilege. Additionally, I argue that the rhetorical and behavioral tactics used by trolls, including sensationalism, spectacle, and emotional exploitation, are homologous to tactics routinely deployed by American corporate media outlets. In short, trolling operates within existing systems, not in contrast to them, immediately complicating knee-jerk condemnations of trolling behaviors. / 10000-01-01

Few data are available on distribution, abundance, and ecology of scyphozoans in the Northern California Current (NCC). This thesis is divided into four chapters, each of which contributes to our understanding of a different stage of the scyphozoan life history. The first study describes the settlement preferences of Chrysaora fuscescens planulae in the laboratory. Planulae were found to respond to the interaction of substrate and orientation. Artificial substrates were identified as viable habitat for C. fuscescens. In the second chapter, a population of scyphistomae in Charleston, Oregon were identified to species-level using DNA barcoding techniques. The third and fourth chapters focus on the medusa stage of the life history. Using surveys mailed to fishers in the Pacific Region, this study provides baseline data on the types and magnitudes of economic damages caused by jellyfish on different fisheries and helps assess fishers' perceptions of jellyfish population trends in the NCC. This thesis includes previously unpublished co-authored material.

Thesis(M. A. (Research Psychology)) -- University of Limpopo, 2020 / Incidents associated with internet trolling and cyberbullying are a problem among adolescents. A quantitative research method was applied in this study to explore if attitudes towards cyberbullying can mediate the association between the Dark Tetrads of personality and internet trolling among undergraduate University students in South Africa.. A convenience sample (N = 249) of undergraduates was recruited, and data were collected using a structured, composite questionnaire, within a cross-sectional research design. The findings indicated that there was a small but statistically significant indirect effect, b = 0.4, BCa CI [0.015, 0.071]. A more nuanced analysis showed that only the mediation models involving psychopathy and everyday sadism as independent variables were statistically significant (p < .05). From the results, it can be concluded that internet trolling does mediate the relationship between the Dark Tetrads of personality and attitudes towards cyberbullying. However, the Dark Tetrad personality dimensions of Machiavellianism and narcissism are not significantly involved in the relationship.

This diploma thesis focuses on the problematic aspects of the journalistic profession nowadays, namely on the example of the penetration of the mystifying jokes to the mainstream media. In three specific cases where the authors of the mystifying pranks managed to penetrate the media, the work illustrates the most common mistakes journalists can make and focuses on trends, which stand for these tendencies. Part of this work is the analysis of the mystifying contents that appeared on jokes websites, on Facebook or in the context of interpersonal communication, and subsequent analysis of the media in which these mystifying reports appeared in the form of the real events. The interviews with both stakeholders - authors of the hoax contents and media representatives - will subsequently serve for the illustration of the overall issue and the final conclusion.

Purpose – Online environments, such as social networks and online forums, offer new possibilities and a wide variety of identity and social relationship management for the users. However, besides functional contributions like mutual support and easy ways of establishing contacts there are critical perspectives on computer-mediated communication (CMC) regarding detrimental behavior like provoking, overbearing, attacking and insulting other users, especially when anonymity is high. Recent research has shown that these kinds of online behavior are associated with personality traits like sadism, machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy (Buckels, Trapnell & Paulhus, 2014) and can lead to severe trouble, negative affect and dysfunction in online communities (Cheng, Danescu-Niculescu-Mitzil & Leskovec, 2015). As such, in the public perception “trolls“ have become a synonym for counterproductive and dysfunctional behavior (Bishop, 2014a, 2014b). Our research aim was to shed more light on trolling and counterproductive online behavior theoretically as well as empirically. In other words: We wanted to know who is behind the troll? How can he or she be characterized in terms of personality traits and what can be expected from trolls when it comes to the organizational context and job performance? Design/methodology/approach – In a first step, we formulated a theoretical framework on counterproductive online behavior. On that ground, two online surveys (N = 122; N = 133) were conducted. The first study’s goal was to develop and validate a questionnaire on counterproductive online behavior. The second study analyzed counterproductive online behavior and tested for possible interrelations to personality traits and work-related outcomes. Originality/value – Using explanatory factor analyses we developed a 40-item questionnaire with two higher dimensions: Constructiveness and destructiveness. 15 subscales focus on different communication styles and trolling strategies. The second study tested the two dimensions of counterproductive online behavior on work-related outcomes such as work engagement, task-related performance and interpersonal facilitation. As was expected, destructiveness revealed significant negative correlations with all work-related outcomes as well as deviant work behavior. Constructiveness, in contrast, showed positive associations with interpersonal facilitation. Practical implications – So far, research on trolling and counterproductive online behavior has been limited to theoretical or anecdotal approaches in most cases (cf. Bishop, 2013a, 2013b). Our study aimed at a more systematic examination of this CMCspecific phenomenon. However, our study design, acquisition of the samples and the formulation of the questionnaire suggest that the results are valid indeed. On that note, our research is a first step for a deeper understanding on people showing counterproductive online behavior.

What happens when an online community moves to a real space? Take the case of Anonymous. For several years now, this, loosely connected, entirely internet based group has been known for online pranks and griefing, often being labeled by the media as "hackers on steroids" or "the Internet Hate Machine". However, recently a significant portion of the group has taken up the cause of protesting what it sees as criminal injustices of the Church of Scientology. This move into the real world sparked various discussions which are relevant for online communities as a whole. What negotiations, compromises, and changes took place in order to move into the real world space? In what ways has the group succeeded (or failed) in maintaining the momentum needed for long term real-world protest and what can other online communities gain from this history?

Unfiltered online language use is most visible where social media sites highlight power injustices such as racism, homophobia, feminism and sexism, which in turn sometimes promotes behavior such as cyber-bullying or internet-trolling. Women have been explicit targets for cyber-bullying and internet-trolling. The linguistic sub-field of gender and language considers questions of how language is used by and about men and women. This is a language and gender study with focus on a gender vocabulary and gendered language use in an online social media forum. This study aims to reveal the linguistic patterns in the discussions about genders. This was represented by YouTube video where one man and one woman, engaged in a debate on misogyny in comedy. The research was done through a qualitative and a quantitative research, by studying the comment section regarding the YouTube video. The results show that there are two different ways of how and what people tend to focus on when talking about men and women. For a woman, her appearance will most likely be in focus while, when talking about a man, it is the man’s performance that is of relevance. The asymmetry is that men are discussed with regards to what they are saying while women are evaluated for how they are saying it, and what they look like saying it.